Herbert H. Clark

WORD ASSOCIATIONS AND LINGUISTIC THEORY

[...] The free-association game has been played for centuries. It requires only a stimulus, a referee, and a player who is willing to follow the simple rule, “Say the first thing that comes to mind when the stimulus is presented to you.” [...] Word associations have characteristically different effects depending on the rules the player has followed. When the player is allowed to take his time, he generally reacts with rich images, memories, or exotic verbal associations, and these give way to idiosyncratic, often personally revealing, one-word responses. But when he is urged to respond quickly, his associations become more superficial, less idiosyncratic, and more closely related in an obvious way to the stimulus; these responses are much more predictable in that they are the ones almost everyone else gives to the stimulus. But if he has to respond even more quickly, the player will ignore even the meaning of the stimulus and produce clang responses words that sound like or rhyme with the stimulus. Of these three categories, it is the second that is most dependent on linguistic competence. But there are important differences even among these fast, meaningful responses. The common associations — i. e., the responses other people are most likely to give — are produced more quickly than the uncommon ones. This suggests that we can attach greater importance to the fastest, most frequent associations, for hypothetically they are the product of the basic association mechanisms.

Even the most preliminary analysis of the word-association game reveals its kinship with language comprehension and production. The game has three identifiable stages: (1) the player must understand the stimulus; (2) he must operate on the meaning of the stimulus; and (3) he must produce a response. It is the unique second stage that clearly sets this game apart from normal language mechanisms. It contains an associating mechanism, which, through its associating rules, fixes the response and the third stage. [...]

I will now consider various important associating rules. In keeping with traditional studies of word associations, I will treat paradigmatic and syntagmatic responses separately. Paradigmatic responses are those that fall in the same syntactic category as the stimulus; syntagmatic responses are those that fall into other categories. For example, a paradigmatic response to the noun tree might be the noun flower, a syntagmatic response to the same word might be the adjective green. For adults, paradigmatic responses are far more prevalent than syntagmatic ones, so they will be discussed first.